Lies And Truths
by Michelle
- John Geddes: A Familiar Rain
Strike was just lighting his first cigarette of the morning. After his recent illness, his lungs were still protesting at any sign of the detective slipping back into his habit of chain smoking, but at least he was allowed a few in a day. Nevertheless, he coughed after the first pull.
“All right, all right!” he cried, unnerved after his coughing fit. “I get it!”
“Talking to ourselves, are we?” Robin’s head popped in when she opened the door to their shared office.
He put the cigarette down on the ashtray and opened the window.
“Yeah, my screwed-up body has been telling me I’m getting older with every passing day,” he answered dryly.
“And wiser?” his partner inquired without a hint of emotion.
Strike looked at her and sighed. “That is the part of the process that has managed to escape me still, I’m afraid.”
She walked into the office, stopping at her chair but not sitting down. The aftermath of her holiday misery was still hovering about her.
“Happy new year,” she said, flashing a hint of a forced smile.
“And to you,” Strike replied, an unpleasant feeling of guilt stinging him with all its might. His thank-you text on New Year’s Day after he had finally opened her Christmas gift was missing the usual wish for the upcoming new year.
They were silent for an awkward moment, passing fleeting looks at each other and whatever object they could lay their eyes on in front of them. Robin was still standing, painfully making him aware of her emotional distance. Their parting before she left for her Christmas break was more than disappointing. She was gripping the top of her chair, looking more for mental support than anything else.
Strike finally broke the silence. “So… how was your Christmas?”
The moment he said the words he would have loved to bury himself in the ground. Knowing Robin, the first holidays as a soon-to-be-divorced woman in a town where everybody lives of everybody’s failure must have been anything but cheerful.
His partner took only a moment to reply with a strained voice and a forced smile.
“Great… Yours?” She couldn’t think of anything more ingenious.
The reply came with an equally short pause, a strained voice and a too-eager nod of his dark-haired head.
“Yeah, great... “ Shit, the pretence is worse than the truth, the detective thought as his last word faded in the tense atmosphere between them.
Robin stared at him for a moment, nodding and taking in his thick, slightly messy hair, the tired, pale complexion that hadn’t changed much since she saw him last, and the creased light grey shirt he was wearing. He definitely didn’t look like someone who had just returned from a blissful family reunion, although considering his aunt’s state of health, there was no wonder. A sudden wave of compassion washed over the detective.
Strike was equally observing her with his dark eagle eyes. Despite the obvious lack of enthusiasm, she was still as beautiful as the day he saw her for the first time as she opened his agency door. Her long red hair, falling to her shoulders, framed the face that was the only welcome face to him whatever mood he was in. Her eyes looked sad, though, and he couldn’t help but think he was part of the reason for that. The draught carried an unknown, subtle, mildly sweet waft of a light floral scent in his direction. Someone was more successful than himself in choosing their Christmas present for Robin. But they hit the bullseye, he thought, it was perfect; it was Robin.
Suddenly Robin was fed up with pretending and she chuckled.
“Actually, it was a total shit,” she admitted and hid her face in her hands for a brief moment, suddenly amused by the fact. Her mildly embarrassed gesture brought a warm smile to his face.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Imagine a baby yelling practically 24/7 for four days, a mother prying on your current – non-existing – love life, and Matthew bringing Sarah to visit his parents, making the whole town tiptoe around me, waiting for me to explode or something. To top it all up, throw in Morris, bombarding me with texts throughout Christmas Eve while being intoxicated.” She went quiet, realising it would have been better to have kept the last information to herself.
“Did he harass you?” Strike’s protective side immediately showed as he tensed.
Robin noticed his unease and berated herself again for the slip of her tongue. “Nothing I couldn’t handle, don’t worry,” she reassured him, smiling to make him relax.
“I’m sorry you had to go through all that,” he said with genuine care. “Actually, mine was total bollocks, too,” he grinned then, leaning against the windowsill and shaking his head.
Robin couldn’t help but smile. Never mind how rotten she had felt because of Strike ignoring her, his smiling face always lifted her spirits.
“What happened? Your nephews broke the headphones I gave you as well?” she teased, raising her eyebrows.
Strike chuckled again. “No. I didn’t go to St Mawes. I was drowning in coughing fits, tons of snots, fever, vomiting and malnutrition – the latter caused by my own effing pride.”
Robin winced with guilt. He was spending the holidays alone, trapped between his sweat-soaked bed and the toilet, with minimal proper food intake, just as she knew he would be. And there she was, thinking he was being an ass, ignoring the basic social courtesy of pretending to be human and appreciating her care, at least on the occasion of Christmas. No wonder his mind was somewhere else than on some insignificant texts.
“Cormoran… Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, her face full of compassion.
“And ruin your perfectly shitty family Christmas?” he replied with a teasing smile.
They both laughed.
“I can assure you it would have been impossible to ruin it even more,” Robin remarked dryly, shaking her head.
He chuckled, and his look fell on the leaflet from the nearby pizzeria that served as his lifesaver during the final stage of his flu and food poisoning battle.
“Pat got me chicken soup on Christmas Eve, though. I couldn’t taste a bugger of it, but it did cheer me up for a minute,” he grinned. Robin had the I-told-you-so look in her eyes. “I found out after I politely told her to sod off,” he added cheekily.
“Strike!” she reprimanded him as usual as of late. His annoyance at their immaculately organised secretary was no news in the office.
He threw up his hands in defence. “I did send her a nice text later to say thank you. “ He shrugged, and a playful smile appeared on his face. “A very nice text.”
Robin lost again; she couldn’t be cross with him when he was like this. “I keep telling you she’s good,” she stated victoriously.
“Not as good as you,” he countered with a twinkle in his eyes.
Her eyes found his again, and she smiled. “I guess we could have had a much better Christmas spending it together.”
Strike didn’t know what to say. Not that he didn’t think the same, in fact, he knew she was right, but admitting it would have meant crossing the boundary he was so painstakingly trying to keep – the boundary of admiration and deep affection, safely wrapped in the form of friendship and partnership. Cross it, and everything gets complicated, he thought regrettably.
Robin misinterpreted his silence as embarrassment and immediately regretted her words. She took a deep breath and casually reached for his mug on the desk in front of him.
“Right, I’ll make tea, and then we can go back to business,” she said listlessly while moving, avoiding his eyes.
She put her hand on the door handle when Strike’s voice stopped her.
“I’m sorry about the chocolates…”
Keeping her hand on the handle, Robin’s heartbeat suddenly quickened, her eyes pinned to the glass door in front of her.
“I was trying to get you a perfume, but then I suddenly…” Strike paused and sighed in defeat. “I guess I got… afraid that it might be too… personal…”
When no reply came his way, his hand went through his hair for a moment, frustration kicking in. He knew he was making an ass of himself, but he also knew that he needed to make this better with Robin, not only for their partnership’s sake. Suddenly he felt extremely vulnerable, more than when he was exposed to landmines and sharpshooters in Afghanistan.
“Shit, Robin…,” he exhaled, exasperated, shaking his head, hating himself more than ever before. “I know I’m a prick. I can remember the exact description of what some shitface at a rotten bar looked like twenty years ago, but I can’t remember my best friend’s birthday.”
Robin closed her eyes at his confession. Of course, he forgot, and yet, best friend… It was typical Strike, driving her to insanity and making her miserable at times, but the truth was, she wouldn’t want him any other way. Being Strike was why she liked him in the first place.
“ I wish I was better at this,” Strike continued more calmly now, still talking to her back. “I… You…”
We, he immediately thought, subconsciously seeing them as an inseparable entity, at work, in life, everywhere, in their own comfortable way. His voice sounded depressed.
“I wish I could give you more… You deserve more, so much more than this…”
Heavy silence befell the office. Strike felt mentally drained. In a minute, he opened up to his work partner more than he was able to in all the years they’d known each other. And all out of pure desperation – he was desperate not to lose the fragile connection between them, not as detectives but as human beings.
Robin swallowed hard, closed her eyes and smiled widely, feeling a tear running down her cheek. Her hand released the handle, and she put the mug on the cupboard shelf next to the door. Wordlessly, she turned around, and looking him in the eyes all the way, her arms went around his neck when she approached him. Holding tight, probably more than she would have liked, she let a few more tears run down her face, especially when she felt his arms tighten around her as well.
Strike closed his eyes and inhaled her new scent. Involuntarily he shivered. Try as he might, the effect she had on him was getting stronger the longer they knew each other. Charlotte was someone he loved a long time ago, someone he was attracted to physically and for some time to her mind as well. Their relationship was wild, complicated, dramatic and draining. Even so, the detective thought he would spend his life with her – until he realised that being possessed by someone isn’t the same as being loved, and he had to break free. She left a deep scar in his heart, making him rougher, edgier and more isolated (by choice) than the war.
Being with Robin, though, even if it was “only” as friends, was as different as it could have been – genuine, full of mutual respect, heart-warming, reassuring and… it felt good, it felt damn good.
“I hate salted caramel,” Robin whispered with a chuckle, still holding tight to him.
“Shit…” Strike muttered into her hair. “I knew I should have gone with the perfume.”
A muffled laugh resounded in his ear before Robin slowly pulled back to look at him, framing his face gently with her hands, caught in the moment.
“Thank you,” she whispered with a genuine, grateful smile, her eyes glistening. His eyes and a warm smile spoke for him; this meant everything to him. If he was honest with himself, she meant everything to him.
Robin pressed a soft peck on his cheek, her hands slid down to his chest, and slowly disengaging herself from his arms, she headed back to the door.
Suddenly she stopped and walked back to her part of the desk, where the expensive box of chocolates that Strike gave her for Christmas lay left untouched. Pat put it there for her after Robin had left it in the front room, disappointed by her seemingly disinterested partner. She opened the box, took a piece of chocolate and popped it into her mouth, smiling.
“I thought you hated salted caramel,” Strike remarked, amused.
Robin observed him for a moment, chewing slowly, for the first time ever enjoying the taste.
“Oh, you know,” she started with a mysterious smile. “Sometimes the things we hate are the things we love the most in the end.”
Her smile widened, mirroring his own, and after grabbing another piece of chocolate, she turned on her heel, took the mug by the door and walked out of the office.
Strike remained rooted to his spot for a long while, unable and unwilling to move. Only when the agency front door opened and he heard Pat rushing in and chatting to Robin, he sat down at his desk and opened his laptop.
He was still smiling.
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